Green Gas for your home: Gas that does Good

At Good Energy we’re excited to be making our gas green – by sourcing gas extracted from decaying food, plants, and poo!

6% of our domestic gas supply now comes from biomethane sourced right here in the UK. It’s the gas we use to cook and heat our homes, coming from the waste we don’t want.

What is green gas?

Green gas, or biomethane, is gas that’s not from fossil fuels.

When organic matter – like leftover cheese, apple cores and potato peels – decomposes, it releases a gas called methane. This gas is captured, fed into the national gas grid and supplied to your home.

This process is called anaerobic digestion, and it’s a way of capturing natural gas without needing to dig it out of the ground.

Best of all, because green gas is produced from organic matter that has grown and absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the same amount of CO2 is released when the green gas is burned. This doesn’t break what we call ‘the carbon balance’.

Is green gas a brand new idea?

It was first discovered that decaying matter produced flammable gases nearly 400 years ago, and anecdotal evidence of green gas use goes back as far as the 10th century.

Its use in the UK didn’t begin until 1895, when gas was extracted from sewage and used to power street lamps in Exeter. It wasn’t until very recently that commercial biomethane production really kicked off.

In 2013 there was just one green gas plant in the UK. Now there are over 60 projects using anaerobic digestion to make biomethane useful to us.

Green gas is incredibly versatile, used as a source of electricity, a replacement to petrol, and of course – a new way to heat our homes.

Reducing carbon emissions around the world

We didn’t think introducing biomethane to our gas mix was quite enough, so we’re also neutralising the emissions from the gas our customers use through carbon saving schemes around the world.